So, How Do GOP Lawmakers Defend Opposition to Equal Pay?

Sure, yes: It's hard to believe that any warm-blooded human could oppose equal pay in 2016. Uber feminist Justin Trudeau is the Canadian prime minister! Barack and Michelle Obama live in the White House. We have Jane Fonda on our team! And yet here we are, still fighting a bunch of GOP lawmakers who refuse to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.

The Paycheck Fairness Act is a proposed bill that would strengthen laws already on the books to close the wage gap in the United States. If passed, the law would put the burden of justification for differential pay on workplaces and require that government agencies collect data on how women are hired and fired and compensated nationwide. It would revise the Equal Pay Act of 1963, giving workers permission to sue employers for punitive damages. Women still earn only 79 percent of what men take home for full-time work. For black and Hispanic women, the statistics are grimmer.

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Congressional Republicans have blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act in 2010, 2012, and 2014, despite overwhelming Democratic support. When pressed to explain why they have opposed a bill that would at last ensure equal pay for equal work, this is what a few of them had to say: